


sea may rise, sky may fall

by PersonalityTest



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M, hanahaki that ends well? perish the thought, turns out I'm a dumbass and I love writing dumbasses, yeah the tag just tells you everything, you'd think it's full of angst but it's actually one of the lighter pieces I've written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 00:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18905878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersonalityTest/pseuds/PersonalityTest
Summary: Honestly, after this, Eugeo had probably had it up to here with flowers. Hanahaki AU.





	sea may rise, sky may fall

**Author's Note:**

> I love dumbasses, also I was a liar and GBF's Guild War is mindnumbingly boring, so this happened. I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending, but I still need to farm like 20m more for prelims so this is what you get. yes im dumbass baby
> 
> Title from AG ft. Claire Wyndham's My Love Will Never Die. 'sea may rise / sky may fall / my love will never die', that kinda stuff. It's not my fault I binged Lucifer in one night. It's a great song though, kind of fitting for this little piece.

Tiese was looking at his fingers rapping impatiently on the armchair. Ronye was trying not to fidget. Eugeo was mostly just pissed.

Late, again. He was going to murder that idiot when he gets back. Or at the very least, hide their supply of kohiru tea leaves, that’d teach him. It would almost be worth listening to Kirito whine for three whole days, until he would be able to go buy more on their day of rest. As Eugeo thought so, the window behind him slammed open.

“I’m back!” He heard his partner’s voice, accompanied by a cool autumn breeze.

 _He’s dead, that’s what he is._ Kirito must have seen that from Eugeo’s expression, because he immediately took a step back and raised his hands in surrender.

“I brought food?” His idiot nervously said, and then before Eugeo could say anything, hurriedly added, “For you guys too! It’s the limited edition green tea honey pies!”

The girls’ slightly uncomfortable expressions were immediately replaced with sparkling eyes. Unfortunately for Kirito, Eugeo wouldn’t be bought so easily. That idiot should know that. Even so, he let the girls finish their daily reports and bring the pastries back to their dorms to share with their friends. They seemed happy about it, so he wouldn’t smother Kirito in his sleep with his own pillow – for now, at least.

“So, Kirito.” He began after the doors closed behind the young valets, and his arm reached out fast as a whip to grab the other boy’s sleeve before he could run away from Eugeo’s wrath. “Not so fast. Care to tell me why you’re late this time?”

“P-Please spare me.” Kirito begged with his usual kicked puppy eyes. Normally Eugeo had a soft spot for those eyes, but clearly he had to be the one to maintain some standards around here. “I got distracted by the limited edition sale. Also, for some reason I was really tired today and the weather was so great, so I decided to take a nap at that spot near the river…and yeah, that kind of stuff. Really, I don’t know why I was so tired, and I was even coughing a little too. I must be coming down with the flu or something…” He sneaked a glance at Eugeo, whose scowl didn’t soften at all.

“I can understand that, but it’s still no excuse for being late.”

“Merciless as always…” Kirito pouted, and started coughing slightly. It sounded believable enough, so Eugeo decided he could go easy for once. He definitely wouldn’t let Kirito get away with it next time, though.

“I guess there’s no way around it. Go take a shower and rest up. It should heal up in a few days.” He instructed Kirito. “That cough sounded a little bad, so how about chamomile tea for tonight?”

“Yes, mother.” The black-haired boy pouted a little, but knew better to protest. A pissed off Eugeo was not an opponent he could win against, and especially not when he was sick. The door closed behind him as he went into another coughing fit. Eugeo leaned back into the sofa and let out a long-suffering sigh, and that was when he noticed a hint of red scattered at the entrance Kirito just left from.

He walked over and knelt down, using a finger to poke at the red…flower petals? They were thin and curly, and didn’t smell like anything in particular, but that was all he got out of them. Maybe they got stuck on Kirito’s clothes while he was off sleeping like a vagrant in Stacia-knows-where, and fell out when he left the room. He didn’t want to leave them there to be stepped on though, so Eugeo gathered the five or so petals in his hands, walked to the kitchen, and put them in the trash can.

“Now, where did I put the chamomile…” Muttering so to himself, Eugeo started rifling through the cupboards.

 

* * *

 

Tomorrow was a day of rest. That thought was the only thing getting Eugeo through today’s rigorous training from morning until sundown. Exams were coming up, and Eugeo still badly needed practice on his form and technique. He had been hacking at the practice dummy for more than five hours, and continued practicing together with Tiese when she came for her tutoring, but he was still not satisfied that he could advance up to third…no, maybe even fourth seat in the upcoming swordsmanship exam.

Still, however bad he was doing, Kirito seemed to be having a worse time. He would not stop coughing, he was running a bit of a fever, and his movements seemed sluggish. It was so bad that Ronye insisted that he rest up until the flu went down and really, it was no trouble at all, it was her job to take care of him and would he like some herbs to reduce the fever? Kirito managed a nod, and now it was up to Eugeo to get him back to the dorms while Ronye went to fetch some medicinal herbs.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Eugeo asked, Kirito’s arm slung across his shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve seen you come down with a flu before, so I thought you have a high resistance to illness statuses, but this seems pretty serious.”

“I’m sure it’ll get better in a few days.” Kirito wheezed. “There are all kinds of flu statuses and all. I probably got hit with a pretty bad one. I feel bad though, since we planned to spend tomorrow’s day of rest with Tiese and Ronye.”

Eugeo frowned. “You don’t need to worry about that. Just focus on getting better.”

Once they got back to the dorms and Ronye arrived with the herbs, Kirito’s fever went down a little, but he said he was tired and fell asleep right on the sofa. Not wanting to wake him, Eugeo instructed the girls to return to their own dorms, and after making sure to drape a blanket over his sleeping partner, he left for the cafeteria.

Thankfully, he did not run into either Humbert or Raios today. He was already rattled enough from today’s practice and Kirito’s sickness, and he would not be able to end a conversation with those two in a peaceful manner. If he were caught being disrespectful and punished, what would happen to Kirito who was suffering upstairs? The thought of his partner alone, calling for Eugeo while he was not there, made his heart burn.

Vegetables in cheese, stew, some Siral water – in other words, Kirito’s favorites – and after a few moments Eugeo decided to get the porridge as well. Kirito didn’t seem to be in a shape to eat solid foods. Personally, Eugeo didn’t trust his partner’s taste in food all that much. Excessive amounts of kohiru tea notwithstanding, vegetables in cheese was quite something else. He wondered how Kirito managed to survive this long, and allowed himself a tiny smile. It didn’t really matter how anyway, since they would be together until the end of this journey. The thought comforted him somewhat as he made his way back to their room.

When he got back, Kirito was already up and was staring at something. A plant, it seemed. His partner jolted, but did not look up when he opened the door.

“Kirito, are you doing alright? How’s the fever?” Eugeo asked. It was strange. The flu notwithstanding, Kirito was usually more animated than this.

“Eugeo…” His partner looked up and said in a quiet voice. Now that he was closer, he could see the long-stemmed flower bud Kirito was holding in his trembling hands. Eugeo’s heart started beating faster. “I felt something in my throat, and I started coughing, and then, I saw, this…”

As if to demonstrate, his black-haired partner started another coughing fit. He was trying to hack out something, and as Eugeo watched Kirito finally managed to spit out another identical flower bud. The flowers Eugeo just saw…were inside him. His lungs. Chills ran down Eugeo’s spine.

“Eugeo…” Kirito begged, his eyes wide and terrified, as he stared at the flowers in his hands. “Help me.”

 

* * *

 

Eugeo stared at the tiny buds in the small vase in front of him, as if staring hard enough would somehow make the solution to their problem magically appear.

For once, he and Kirito were spending their day of rest in the library. Normally Kirito would not step foot in a library – he hated studying, and anything longer than a few pages of Sacred Arts would get a whine and some groans out of him. He was not the type to look up history or literature either, always insisting that it was Eugeo’s forte and he would just rely on him if anything related to those came up. Usually, those antics would get him an exasperated smile and some chiding words from Eugeo, who was secretly happy to be relied on, but today neither of them could crack a smile as they went through one book after another.

Flowers etymology. Books on common colds and flus. Records of rare maladies involving flowers. The bell for six in the afternoon just rang, and yet Eugeo found nothing, not even a name for the flower buds Kirito was repeatedly hacking up.

“I don’t understand.” Eugeo closed the book he was reading on rare plants, perhaps a little too loudly. “There is nothing even closely related to this flower. Normally even when it’s not fully blooming, there should be some sort of common traits with other species in the same, or related families, but I barely have anything to go off of. There’s only a stem branching into five or six buds, and at this point that could be anything.”

Eugeo didn’t want to consider the only other feasible option – that is, the possibility that this mysterious flower did not exist in this world. Since, that would mean that they were at a dead end, with no clues to the disease itself and no idea as to what the flower really was. What would happen to Kirito then? Would the disease just disappear by itself after a while? Would it have lasting effects in some way? If something happened to Kirito, Eugeo would not know what to do with himself.

It took him a few moments to realize Kirito was not paying attention to him. His partner’s dark eyes were wide open, unblinkingly glued on a page of an old scroll.

“…Kirito?” Eugeo reached over to grab his partner’s shoulder.

Kirito looked up at him, and Eugeo saw clearly the terror reflected in those beautiful eyes. His heart sank.

“…I found it, Eugeo. The illness.”

Eugeo couldn’t believe what he was reading. It was a rare disease, happening once every few hundred years. He read something about ‘irregular’, ‘malfunction in soul structure’, ‘those not of this world’, but all these words seemed incomprehensible to him. They seemed to make sense to Kirito, who became quieter and paler as they went on. However, Eugeo managed to understand two things from the scrolls.

First, the disease was called Hanahaki. The cause was unfulfilled love. The victim’s lungs would fill up with flowers, and they would proceed to cough them up. It started with petals – Eugeo thought back to the petals he carelessly threw in the trash can the other day and felt a chill down his spine – and then unbloomed flowers, and finally the victim would start to cough up fully bloomed flowers. The disease generally lasted from a week to months depending on the toxicity of the flowers, but if Kirito was already coughing up flower buds, his was clearly the more toxic kind.

Second, the disease was fatal. The flowers would eventually fill up the victim’s lungs and suffocate them. There were two cures; the first one, naturally, was for the unrequited feelings to be returned. The second was for a high-ranking priest from the Axiom Church to perform an operation on the person, removing the memories of the target as well as the disease.

“That…that’s great!” Eugeo exclaimed. “We can just ask someone – I’m sure Azurika-sensei would be happy to help, or if not, we could ask someone from the Church…”

“I can’t.”

He froze. Kirito wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Eugeo didn’t know what he meant by that. The operation seemed to be the most feasible option – the alternative was death. For Kirito to choose death instead of forgetting the target of his unrequited love…that meant he knew who it was, and he refused to forget them. He ignored the sudden pain in his chest at the thought of the person Kirito loved, and forged on. If Kirito knew who it was, the answer was simple. They had to go find that person, and somehow have them return Kirito’s affections.

“Kirito, that person…” He began.

“I can’t.” Kirito shook his head. “I know who she is. It’s impossible. She’s not in this world.”

 _So I’ll die,_ was left unsaid between them.

 

* * *

 

Kirito showed no surprise when he saw the flowers in full bloom.

Yesterday, they had gone back to the dorms in silence. Eugeo had been trying to process everything that was happening, and Kirito – well, Kirito had been too busy coughing his lungs out in flowers. They had used some more medicinal herbs, and it seemed to slow the progression of the illness somewhat, but Eugeo knew that if he opened Kirito’s Stacia Window right now, he would see the Life of his partner decrease bit by bit as the disease ran its course. Their shared living space was littered with long stems and flower buds, but neither of them had the strength, or the heart, to do anything about it. Finally, early this morning, Kirito had coughed up some fully bloomed flowers, which Eugeo was looking at right now.

In different circumstances, Eugeo would have thought them exquisite. He had never seen something like that before, not even in the flower books he borrowed from the library. Thin, curly petals from three or so blossoms were curved into a bulb shape, framed by long, dainty – Kirito called them stamens – that curved upwards. They seemed so delicate even the slightest wind could blow them away. If he hadn’t seen Kirito throw one up with his own eyes, Eugeo wouldn’t even believe such a flower could exist.

Lycoris, or red spider lilies, Kirito called them. He did not know what that name meant, but judging from Kirito’s look, it wasn’t a good thing. Apparently, this flower symbolized loss, longing, and death. Since it was extremely poisonous, it was called the flower of funerals, Kirito said with a slight exhale.

Eugeo couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are you so calm about this?”

“Eugeo…” Kirito frowned, but it was as if the floodgates had been opened, and words poured out of him.

“And that’s not all! What did you mean when you said you knew who that person was? Who is she? How do you know that she’s not in this world? If you know that, then…”

Then, did you truly lose your memories. Have you been lying to me the whole time. He did not voice those questions, but Kirito seemed to hear them loud and clear. He went into another coughing fit, and despite the anger and betrayal he felt, Eugeo could not help but rush over to his partner’s side and firmly hold his shoulders.

“Are you alright, Kirito?”

Kirito wheezed and gasped for breath, clawing at his throat as if he wanted to rip it out of him. Three more flowers fell into his lap. Eugeo could not distinguish the bloodstains from the red of the petals, but the scent of blood wafted about just the same.

Up until that point, maybe some part of him had held out a hope that a cure was still possible, or it was still not too late to do something. However, at that moment, he knew that it was truly hopeless. Kirito would only have a few more days to live, and he would choose his own death to protect his love. It was an overwhelming devotion to another, and Eugeo wished it were for him instead. The thought made tears prick at the corner of his eyes. He didn’t want Kirito to die, not only because he was scared of moving on with his quest to rescue Alice without Kirito, but also because…

How cruel it was, to love another and then forced to watch that person die with that love unfulfilled. For just a second, he could feel phantom flowers fill up his lungs, suffocating him with the weight of his own love.

Kirito reached a hand up to wipe the tears away from his eyes. Don’t cry, his tender expression seemed to say, but there was no way Eugeo could do that. Not when it had come to this point.

“Eugeo, I…” Kirito took a deep breath. “I have to tell you something. It’s an outrageous story, and I know it’s hard to believe, but I need you to listen to me until the end.”

 

* * *

 

In a distant corner of his mind, he knew that there was something deeper to the story Kirito was telling him. Within that outrageous story was the truth of this world. Unfortunately, after a few days of one crisis after another, Eugeo had lost the capacity of mind to process even that. He barely had the mind to consider the implications that this world was merely an experiment, or he was an artificial soul, or how they were all just rats made to run amok in a cage and observed for fun. All that mattered to him was only one thing.

“I won’t die. Not in the sense that you’re thinking, at least.” Kirito said in a defeated voice, his shoulders tensed up as if he were awaiting judgment. “I will simply…wake up. It will be as if this has been a long dream. A long, blissful, happy dream.” His partner let out a sad chuckle at that, and continued.

“I know you feel betrayed and used. But, I need you to know that I have never considered you as anything less than human. Just like I am.” Kirito begged. “You, and everyone in this world, are precious to me. After I wake up, I swear to you, on my life and whatever is worth of it, that I will find a way to bring you to the Real World, and I will fight for this world that I have grown to love. If nothing else, I need you to believe that.”

Kirito was an idiot.

None of that mattered to him one bit.

Eugeo wrapped him in a tight hug. Kirito was thinner than he remembered, probably from the strain of his illness. Without Kirito to wipe them away, his tears fell one after another, soaking into the other boy’s shoulders.

“I’m so glad…” His voice was muffled and cracked with tears. “I don’t care about another world, or being human, or anything. I just, I just didn’t want you to die…”

Kirito’s shoulders started to shake, and his voice, too, was breaking.

“You idiot…I just told you about all those things, and that’s what you focus on? You complete idiot…” He repeated, but there was no force in those words. Overwhelmed with emotions of all kinds, they simply sat there and cried together. For Kirito, it was probably the relief of letting go his secret, and being forgiven for having hidden it from Eugeo all this time. For Eugeo, it was a whirl of mixed feelings. He still didn’t know exactly how to process Kirito’s fantastical story, but for now his mind was filled with fear, of losing Kirito and forced to finish this journey on his own, and the overwhelming hope that this was not the end, and they would be able to meet again. Of course, there was the despair of losing the person he loved most, but Eugeo would go mad if he thought about it right now, so he didn’t.

They fell asleep shoulder to shoulder on the worn sofa, tired and fatigued from the events of the past few days. Nothing in particular had changed – spider lilies littered the space around them like the procession of a funeral, Kirito would succumb to the illness in a few days and leave his side, and the thought of being left alone again scared Eugeo to death, but as they slept with their heads on each other’s shoulders, Eugeo was more at peace than he had felt in a long time.

 

* * *

 

They agreed that for the time being, they would sleep in Kirito’s room. Mostly for Eugeo to monitor him if something went wrong, but in actuality Eugeo just didn’t want to waste what little time with Kirito he had left. Kirito seemed to know his true intentions, but said nothing.

“I do need to ask you a favor though.” Kirito said the next morning, as Eugeo went around to collect the flowers all over the place. At this rate, the room would look like a garden before the day was out.

“What is it?”

“I don’t really have much time, so I’d like to do as much as I can before that.” Eugeo’s face fell and Kirito looked away, coughing up another flower. “I want to talk to Ronye, arrange for a new mentor for her, and get all my other affairs in order. Mostly, I want to enjoy the few days I have left. Do you have any healing potions?”

Eugeo shook his head. He never thought he would need to stock up potions, and now that their day of rest was over, they couldn’t go buy more for now. However, there might be another way. He walked over and opened Kirito’s Stacia Window.

His partner’s Life was already down to a third. On top of his Life bar was a status effect notification, an icon of a flower. He knew that it was the marker for the Hanahaki disease, which would not disappear until either Kirito’s feelings were returned or he elected for the operation. Since he chose neither, the status effect would leech his Life away at an alarming rate. At the pace this was going, he didn’t know if Kirito would last through today. The thought terrified him and hardened his resolve.

“System call.” He took hold of Kirito’s left hand and said before the other boy could protest. “Transfer Human Unit Durability, self to right.”

“What –“ Kirito tried to pull away, but Eugeo held on until his Life was down to half and Kirito’s were almost full. He released Kirito’s hand and took a stagger backwards.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Kirito scowled. “Don’t sacrifice yourself for my sake. I told you, right? Your Life is more important than mine, at least in this world.”

“I don’t care about that.”

Kirito’s mouth opened soundlessly, his eyes wide open in horror instead of anger. Eugeo heard an awful sound, like a throat tearing apart – he swallowed his bile at the thought – and then horrible, trembling inhales as Kirito ran out of breath and started gasping, throwing up three flowers only because he no longer had the strength to even cough. As Eugeo stared, unable to even do anything, Kirito finally settled down and put the flowers aside as if he couldn’t bear to look at them. His Stacia Window was still open, and Eugeo saw that that one coughing fit slashed off at least a tenth of his Life. At this rate, it didn’t matter how many healing potions they had. Even if they tried their hardest and Eugeo replenished Kirito’s Life with his own, it would only last for a few days. He ignored the despair he felt at the thought and went on.

“Do you feel alright? Can you move?”

“…Yeah.” Kirito stood up with some difficulty, and managed a weak smile. He had dearly missed that smile in the last few days. “Thanks, Eugeo. But seriously, don’t do that again. It’s not worth it.”

Kirito said that, but Kirito was also an idiot. “We’ll see how it goes.”

 

* * *

 

The hardest part was talking to Tiese about it. He didn’t know what Kirito was saying to Ronye, but surely it couldn’t be easier than telling his own valet that his best friend, the mentor to her best friend, had to leave the academy. They didn’t want to tell the girls that Kirito was going to die, since it would have just caused them unnecessary pain.

“It’s…it’s something that we can’t find a cure for in Centoria.” Eugeo said. This much was true at least, though he didn’t tell her that the ‘cure’ could only be found in another world. He could barely believe it himself. “So Kirito will have to leave to receive treatment somewhere else. It will take a while.”

“No way…” The red-haired girl whispered, tears already forming at the corner of her eyes. “I didn’t know it was that serious. Will Kirito-senpai be alright?”

“I hope so.” That was the only assurance he could give her. “But you don’t have to worry about Ronye. We’ll make sure Kirito’s successor is a good mentor to her.”

They sat there in silence, each trying to process what was happening. Eugeo finally allowed himself to think about what would happen after Kirito left him. What would he do? Would he really be able to win the Four Empires Unity Tournament and become an Integrity Knight without his partner? Kirito promised he would come back, but how much time would pass before that? Time in the Real World moved more slowly, he had said. What if, after Kirito left for that world, years passed and Eugeo died before he was able to meet Kirito again? The thought scared him, but thinking about it now was like dwelling on the fact that he, Tiese and Ronye were all artificial souls, controlled by higher beings and made out to be an experiment. That way lay madness.

“We’re back.” Kirito said as he opened the door. His voice was weak and he looked paler already; Eugeo made a note to go out and buy some potions later. Ronye trailed behind him, her eyes red-rimmed. They sat together and tried their best to reassure the girls, who soon left with tears still in their eyes, and Eugeo breathed a sigh after they were gone.

“What did you say to her?” Kirito asked. He was playing with a spider lily, poking at the flower petals.

“…Nothing much. Just some excuses about how you have to leave soon. You?”

“…Same thing. We talked a little bit about training and some sword technique tips. She’s a good learner. I’ll miss her, after I’m gone. …Well, it’ll just be a few moments for me, though.”

“You’ll be gone…” Eugeo repeated to himself. How lonely that felt – it was only two years, and yet he could no longer imagine a life without his best friend and partner. The thought of wasting away bit by bit, waiting for Kirito until the moment he died alone terrified him.

“Hey.” Kirito reached over and held his shoulders, saying in a gentle voice. “I would never leave you behind. You know that, right? No matter what happens. No matter how many years pass, wherever you end up, I’ll always find you.”

If Eugeo were delusional enough, he could almost think it a confession of love.

“…Yeah. I believe you.”

 

* * *

 

Kirito was getting progressively weaker. He was coughing more often, and his fits went on late into the night. Eugeo was barely able to get any sleep himself; he often found himself waking up to the nightmarish sounds of Kirito wheezing for air between coughs, trying to get him to calm down and sleep, and then the cycle would start again. It got to the point that their bed was filled with red spider lilies no matter how many times Eugeo went to throw them away. He didn’t even want to look at Kirito, framed by flowers of death on all sides. He felt like he would go crazy if he did, so he averted his eyes and tried to hold in his screams.

With some healing potions and some Life from Eugeo himself, Kirito finally recovered enough to go outside and maintain a normal schedule, at least for a short time. He was still weak, and vomiting up flowers from time to time, but Eugeo made sure to stock up on potions just in case. Once Kirito started to lose more Life than the potions could heal up, though, it would all be useless.

For today, Kirito wanted to go outside one last time, before he became too weak. They skipped training, but it was a fair price to pay. They went to buy some snacks, and Kirito looked around the streets of Centoria as if he were trying to engrave the scenery into his mind. They spent a good part of the day just like that – walking the streets, talking about nothing in particular, and finally retiring back to the dorms once the bell for four-thirty rang. Kirito had wanted to stay out longer, but Eugeo wouldn’t budge.

Kirito, for his part, tried to remain upbeat. He was taking this as an excuse to stuff his face with more honey pies, kohiru tea and whatever unhealthy food he liked, and he was making an effort to joke around more than usual. Maybe he was trying to do this for Eugeo’s sake as well, to lessen the pain of saying goodbye. Whatever the reason may be, Eugeo allowed himself to fall into the delusion that everything was normal and his life wasn’t falling apart.

“I was really surprised when you first said that command, that time when we went into the cave to save Selka.” Kirito said, slouching gracelessly on the sofa, while Eugeo went to dump the flowers he had coughed up in today’s outing into a box in a corner of the room. Their topic of choice today was Sacred Arts. It turned out that the Sacred Tongue was another language in Kirito’s world, called English. It was a language similar to the Common Tongue of Underworld, in that it was spoken in many regions. Kirito seemed to be rubbish at it though.

“Now that’s mean, Eugeo-kun.” Kirito pouted when he said that out loud. It was true though; if Kirito knew the language at all, he wouldn’t struggle so much in Sacred Arts exams.

“Ouch, add salt to the wound, why don’t you…”

They laughed, and he could pretend everything was normal. Kirito asked for some more tea, so he got up to make another pot. They talked from Sacred Arts to food in the Real World – Kirito’s favorite was apparently something called the teriyaki chicken burger – and trivial things like that. Kirito seemed to like talking about technology, which was incomprehensible to him but sounded like a form of magic.

“So you can just swipe a card, and there is a reader device that can read the information in your card, and then deduct the amount you’re supposed to pay. There’s also an installment system where it automatically subtracts the amount from your account every month – no, you don’t have to go anywhere, the system just knows – and I think they’re working on the electronic cash idea, though we haven’t advanced much on that front yet…”

Whatever he was saying was disrupted by a small coughing fit. Eugeo waited out the fit, took the flowers when they were handed to him, and just as blankly, dumped them in the box heaping with identical ones. He didn’t really understand most of what Kirito was talking about earlier, but he dearly wanted just to hear his voice, unmarred by coughs and gasps for breath that had become a familiar feature of their lives lately. And yet, soon enough, he would not be able to hear Kirito’s voice again. The thought frightened him, and for a while he stared at his partner, committing his features to memory. The illness notwithstanding, Kirito’s features were thin and delicate. If his hair was longer, he could easily pass for a girl, Eugeo thought. His eyes were slightly sunken, and there were some blue-and-purple bags under them, but they had not yet lost the glint that captivated those who looked at him, Eugeo among them. Kirito’s skin was pallid, a little bit like a corpse’s, and sometimes a coughing fit would come in waves and make his already frail body tremble like a leaf in a storm.

“Thanks, Eugeo.” Kirito said, his voice still weak and deathly frail. “Well, anyway, where were we? Oh, right…”

The rest of the day passed by just like that. Lately, since their schedules were so busy, they hadn’t had time to just sit down and talk to each other. Eugeo would miss this once Kirito was gone. However, he was starting to think that maybe this was for the best. Kirito looked miserable as he suffered from this cursed disease, and he seemed so happy when he talked about that other world. It was where he originally came from, and while he liked Underworld, it probably couldn’t even compare to the world he was born and grew up in.

It was better this way. Kirito would get to return to his own world, and be happy, and he would no longer have to suffer. Eugeo tried to convince himself of that.

“You’ll see.” Kirito’s voice broke him out of his own thoughts. “I’ll bring you to the Real World, and I’ll take you to see all these things I was talking about. It’s a promise.”

Eugeo highly doubted he would live long enough to see that promise fulfilled, but he didn’t want to tell Kirito that. He simply nodded, and they went on to talk until sundown, when he left for the cafeteria to bring back food for the both of them.

When he got back, Kirito had fallen asleep on the sofa. There were around five more flowers scattered around him, which Eugeo picked up and put in the box they designated for the flowers. He checked Kirito’s Life again – it seemed that each flower now drained approximately an eighth of his Life, and he was coughing up more of them, which meant that no amount of Life from healing potions could save him now. Kirito would probably pass before tomorrow. The thought made him tear up and choke, but Eugeo had already made up his own mind. He would let Kirito go, and believe in him. Kirito would definitely come back, and Eugeo would be here to welcome him when he did.

As he thought so, he gently lifted the black-haired boy up in his arms. Kirito was far too frail – the lovesickness disease had drained all the life out of him, and at this point Eugeo was not even sure he could swing a sword around. He carried Kirito back to the bed, quietly basking in the warmth in his arms, and set him down lightly enough that it wouldn’t wake him. He swatted some flowers aside and climbed in, not bothering to throw these away. He could do that tomorrow, after Kirito was gone. For now, he had had enough of flowers.

For the first time in the years they were together, he held Kirito close. Kirito’s hair was soft on his shoulders, his breathing slow and faint. This warmth would soon disappear, and once his Life reached zero Kirito would scatter into light, without even leaving a trace behind. The thought made his heart shrivel up and die somewhere deep inside his chest. Even though Kirito was in a deep sleep and no longer able to hear him, for one last time, Eugeo whispered into the other boy’s hair.

“Until we meet again, Kirito. And…”

Something started to prick at his right eye. Surely Stacia-sama would forgive him this. He had never been able to say the things that needed to be said, until it had been too late. The two of them had run out of time, at least for now. At this point, he was effectively confessing to a dead man, and surely not even the Taboo Index could not deny him this one solace. For possibly the last time in his life, Eugeo gathered up all of his courage and pressed his own lips against soft, barely-warm ones.

“…I love you.”

 

* * *

 

Something was moving next to him. That wasn’t possible though, since Eugeo was supposed to be alone. Kirito should have passed away by now, and the only thing that would be left would be the funeral flowers he had left behind. And yet, the warmth in his arms were unmistakably that of another person. Eugeo cracked one eye open and nearly jumped back in shock.

Kirito was staring at him with wide eyes, with none of the haze of illness in them. He still looked thin, but his face already looked shades better than it had been yesterday. They were both speechless as Eugeo blankly raised a hand to open the other boy’s Stacia Window – Kirito’s Life was still dangerously low, but it was no longer ticking down like last night. The status effect of the Hanahaki disease had also disappeared. But there was no Sacred Arts involved, and between last night and this morning nothing in particular happened, except –

Oh. Oh no.

“You,… last night, you…” Kirito whispered in a disbelieving voice.

“Don’t say it!” He nearly shrieked. His face must be as red as the flowers around them. “Whatever you’re trying to say, stop right this moment!”

Kirito’s mouth flapped shut, but the incredulous look remained. He probably looked just as surprised, and in a corner of his mind Eugeo realized after what happened last night they were still face to face on the same bed, but he was too busy screaming incoherently in his mind to properly process that fact. Mostly he was just trying not to throttle Kirito somehow, because they went through all of that for absolutely nothing and Kirito was a complete idiot and –

“You idiot!!” Eugeo yelled out loud, half in relief and half in frustration, his hands reaching up to grab Kirito’s collar anyway. “That’s it!? What did we suffer this entire week for!?”

“I don’t know!” Kirito yelled back. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have had to cough up my weight’s worth in poisonous flowers! I would have just…” His face immediately went red.

He would have just what now? Eugeo dearly wanted to ask, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea to say that out loud. At the very least, he would be mortified at the answer.

“W-Well, that aside, the good thing is that I’m alive, right?” His idiot partner tried, his face still as red as Eugeo’s. “We just have to tell the girls and clean up the flowers, and things will be as usual…probably?”

That idiot. There was no way anything was going to be as usual. Not after everything that had happened in the last week, especially last night. Kirito clearly knew that, and if he didn’t Eugeo’s withering glare should have told him as much. In the first place, he didn’t even know Kirito had been awake last night when he said that, and he _certainly_ didn’t know that Kirito had been coughing up those flowers because of him.

Because of him. Stacia help him. That meant the target of Kirito’s unrequited love, was… And the entire time, they had assumed it had been someone else. Kirito had been so convinced it was someone from the Real World. However, if it was him, then…

“You…like me.” Eugeo said, not quite believing it himself no matter how many times he turned the words over and over in his mind. “Those flowers, they were because of me.”

Kirito wouldn’t look at him, but the tip of his ears were tinged pink. “…Yeah. I suppose so.” And really, what was he supposed to do with that knowledge? He should be happy because the feeling turned out to be mutual and Kirito was alive, which was the best case scenario, but what in Stacia’s name were they supposed to do from now on? For Eugeo, who had never confessed to anyone up until last night, nor had he ever been confessed to, his brain was effectively non-functioning.

Kirito seemed to realize how panicked he was getting. “It’s okay.” He said. “You don’t need to worry so much about it. We’ll deal with it as we go on, alright?”

“…Yeah. Alright.”

Kirito was right. They were not going to be any closer to being able to deal with this situation, whatever it was, lying on bed like this. They skipped training yesterday, and Kirito needed to heal up his Life, and they still had boxes and boxes of flowers to clean up. For only a week of coughing, Kirito sure threw up enough flowers for an entire village to go around. There were flowers all over the bed, too, and Eugeo needed to clear them out before they got everywhere. He needed to do something so he wouldn’t go crazy thinking about _that_.

“Eugeo, wait.” Kirito said just as he was getting up. He watched while Kirito quickly snatched up a spider lily, briefly put his lips to the flower, and then reached up to Eugeo’s face with the flower still in his hand. Eugeo’s lips brushed against soft, blood-red petals.

“In return.” Kirito said, not meeting his eyes. “For last night.”

And really, whatever reason still remaining in his mind evaporated at that. Eugeo had lost even the ability to comprehend what was going on; his mouth opened and closed silently for a few moments as if it didn’t know what to do with itself, that was, until he remembered something important.

“…Isn’t the flower poisonous?”

Kirito looked at him like he had just said something particularly brainless. To be fair, it was not _at all_ relevant to what was going on here and Kirito had spent the better part of the week coughing these flowers out of his lungs, so he was basically preaching to the choir. However, his partner finally sighed and got up, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Since Eugeo-kun is an idiot, I’m sure he’ll live. They say idiots don’t catch colds, and all that.”

“I guess you would know, being an idiot and all.” Eugeo returned, but at least for now he could feel a semblance of normalcy back in his life, instead of…whatever this was supposed to be. They would deal with that later. Or maybe never. Hopefully never. As long as he didn’t think about the confession last night, or the kiss, or the actually-but-not-really kiss just now, he would be fine. They could handle it somehow. It would work out, because Kirito was here, and he was alive, and he _liked_ him, and for now Eugeo was okay with that. There was something he needed to say, though.

“I do like you too, you know.”

Kirito looked up at him in surprise. His expression soon morphed into a gentle, brilliant smile, and Eugeo thought somewhere in a corner of his mind that Kirito smiling at him like that, framed by the soft sunlight of early morning and holding these delicate, impossible flowers in his arms, was honestly the most beautiful thing he would ever see in this life or the next.

“…Yeah. I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> SAO Material Edition 29 said gay rights


End file.
